Venus as a Laboratory for Exoplanetary Science

Stephen R. Kane1, Giada Arney2, David Crisp3, Shawn Domagal-Goldman2, Lori S.

Glaze2, Colin Goldblatt4, David Grinspoon5, James W. Head6, Adrian Lenardic7,
Cayman Unterborn8, Michael J. Way9, Kevin J. Zahnle10

1
University of California, Riverside, CA, USA
2
NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, USA
3
JPL, Pasadena, CA, USA
4
University of Victoria, Canada
5
Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, AZ, USA
6
Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
7
Rice University, Houston, TX, USA
8
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
9
NASA GISS, New York, NY, USA
10
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA

Submitted for publication in Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets

Corresponding author: Stephen R. Kane ([email protected])

Key points:
1. The characterization of terrestrial exoplanets, including interior structure and
atmospheres, is becoming a primary focus of exoplanetary science.
2. The boundaries of habitability are best understood through the study of the
extreme environments present on Earth and Venus.
3. There are many outstanding questions regarding Venus that are critical to
answer in order to better constrain models for exoplanets.
 Abstract
The current goals of the astrobiology community are focused on developing a framework for the
detection of biosignatures, or evidence thereof, on objects inside and outside of our solar system.
A fundamental aspect of understanding the limits of habitable environments (surface liquid
water) and detectable signatures thereof is the study of where the boundaries of such
environments can occur. Such studies provide the basis for understanding how a once inhabitable
planet might come to be uninhabitable. The archetype of such a planet is arguably Earth’s sibling
planet, Venus. Given the need to define the conditions that can rule out bio-related signatures of
exoplanets, Venus provides a unique opportunity to explore the processes that led to a
completely uninhabitable environment by our current definition of the term. Here we review the
current state of knowledge regarding Venus, particularly in the context of remote-sensing
techniques that are being or will be employed in the search for and characterization of
exoplanets. We discuss candidate Venus analogs identified by the Kepler and TESS exoplanet
missions and provide an update to exoplanet demographics that can be placed in the potential
runaway greenhouse regime where Venus analogs are thought to reside. We list several major
outstanding questions regarding the Venus environment and the relevance of those questions to
understanding the atmospheres and interior structure of exoplanets. Finally, we outline the path
towards a deeper analysis of our sibling planet and the synergy to exoplanetary science.

1. Introduction
The new era of exoplanet research provides a basis to place the terrestrial planets of our
planetary system into a much broader context and explore a wide range of potential variability
through comparative planetary system research. One of the most compelling questions in
comparative planetology of our Solar System is the origin and evolution of life (astrobiology):
when, where, how and under what conditions did life arise, and what environments encourage its
evolution or cause its extinction? The prime focus of astrobiology research is the search for life
elsewhere in the universe, and this search proceeds with the pragmatic methodology of looking
for liquid water and Earth-like conditions. In our solar system, Venus is the most Earth-like
planet, yet at some point in planetary history there was likely a bifurcation between the two:
Earth has been continually habitable since the end-Hadean, whereas Venus became uninhabitable
at some point in its past. Indeed, Venus may be the type-planet for a world that has transitioned
from habitable and Earth-like conditions through the inner edge of the Habitable Zone (HZ); thus
it provides a natural laboratory to study the evolution of habitability. Exoplanet detection
methods are becoming increasingly sensitive to terrestrial planets, resulting in a much-needed
collaboration between the exoplanetary science and planetary science communities to leverage
the terrestrial body data within the solar system. In fact, the dependence of exoplanetary science
on solar system studies runs deep, and influences all aspects of exoplanetary data, from orbits
and formation, to atmospheres and interiors.
A critical aspect of exoplanetary science to keep in mind is that, unlike the solar system,
in situ data for exoplanet surface environments will not be obtained in the foreseeable future, and
thus exoplanet environments may only be characterized indirectly from other measurables, such
as planetary mass, radius, orbital information, and atmospheric composition. Inferences about
those environments in turn are derived from detailed models constructed using the direct
measurables obtained from observations of and missions to solar system bodies (Fuji et al. 2014;
Madden & Kaltenegger 2018). Thus, even as we struggle to understand the fundamental
properties of terrestrial objects within the solar system, the task of characterizing the surface
environments of Earth-sized planets around other stars will remain ever moreso inaccessible. If
we are then to seek to understand the habitability of planets similar to the Earth, proper
understanding of the boundaries of the HZ are necessary, exploring both habitable and
uninhabitable environments. Furthermore, current and near-future exoplanet detection missions
are biased towards close-in planets (i.e., those with relatively short orbital periods), so the most
suitable targets for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are more likely to be Venus-like
planets than Earth-like planets. Thus, the ongoing efforts to further study and understand the
evolution of Venus’ atmosphere and surface, including its present state, provides critical
information that complements the interpretation of these exoplanet observations. Here, we
review the current state of knowledge regarding Venus in the context of habitability and the
potential of past temperate conditions. We further discuss the relevance of Venus to the study of
terrestrial exoplanets, as well as current and future exoplanet missions, and the primary
outstanding questions on Venus, the answers of which will greatly inform our understanding of
terrestrial planetary evolution and habitability in general.

2. The Current Venus Environment

Venus can be considered an “Earth-like” planet, because it has a similar size and possibly the
same bulk composition (Zharkov, 1983) as its slightly larger neighbor. However, it has a 92 bar
atmosphere consisting 96.5% CO2 and 3.5% N2, and a surface temperature of 735 K. Shown in
the top panel of Figure 1 is an early topographical map of the Venusian surface produced via
radar mapping by the Pioneer Venus orbiter, exhibiting the dominant highlands of Ishtar Terra in
the north and Aphrodite Terra near the equator. The bottom panel of Figure 1 shows a map
produced by the Magellan spacecraft with an improved spatial resolution (less than 100m).
Venus’ atmospheric composition and pressure is well explained by a runaway greenhouse having
occurred in the past (Walker 1975), when insolation exceeded the limit on outgoing thermal
radiation from a moist atmosphere (Komabayashi 1967; Ingersoll 1969; Nakajima et al. 1992;
Goldblatt & Watson 2012; Goldblatt et al. 2013), which led to the evaporation of oceans
presumed to have been present. It is unclear whether the oceans condensed, then later
evaporated, or never condensed after accretion (Hamano et al. 2013). In either case, water loss
by hydrogen escape followed, evident by the substantially high D/H ratio found for Venus
relative to Earth (Donahue 1982). Complete water loss would take a few hundred million years
(Watson et al. 1981), but may have been throttled by oxygen accumulation (Wordsworth &
Pierrehumbert 2014). Notably, massive water loss during a runaway greenhouse has been
suggested as a means to produce substantial O 2 in exoplanet atmospheres (Luger & Barnes
2015), but Venus serves as a counter-example to this concept. The hydration of surface rocks
(Matsui & Abe 1986a) or top-of-atmosphere loss processes (Chassefière 1997; Collinson et al.
2016) are potential sinks for water. Thus, Venus is an ideal laboratory to test hypotheses of
abiotic oxygen loss processes. Tracers for water loss processes on Venus are discussed in detail
in Section 3.
Cloud-top variations in SO2 have been documented over several decades from Pioneer
Venus to Venus Express (Marcq et al. 2012). These observations imply a long-term atmospheric
cycling mechanism, or possibly injections via volcanism. Recently, the Visible and Infrared
Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) identified nine emissivity anomalies attributed to
compositional differences as sites of potentially recent volcanism (Smrekar et al. 2010, hereafter
S2010). These anomalies have purported associated lava flows that are estimated to have a
maximum age of 2.5 million years. However, it is more likely that their age is 250,000 years old
or less (S2010) based on the expected weathering rates of freshly emplaced basalts. Furthermore,
Magellan gravity data indicates that the emissivity anomalies are associated with regions of thin,
elastic lithosphere , strengthening the volcanism interpretation. A new analysis of Venus
Express’ Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) data in 2015 uncovered dditional evidence for active
volcanism on Venus. Four temporally variable surface hotspots were discovered at the Ganiki
Chasma rift zone, located near volcanoes Ozza and Maat Montes (Shalygin et al., 2015),
suggestive of recent or ongoing volcanic activity. However, correct interpretation of these types
of observations from above the cloud layer is challenging. The extent of scattering radiation from
Venus’s surface escaping through the cloud deck is about 100 km 2, so smaller regions of
increased thermal emission are not accurately resolved.
Figure 1: Topographical map of the Venusian surface based on observation from Pioneer Venus
orbiter (top) and the Magellan spacecraft (bottom) Credit: NASA Ames Research Center, US
Geological Survey, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the NASA Space Science Data
Coordinated Archive.
Recently, data from the JAXA Akatsuki spacecraft have shown evidence of striking UV-
bright stationary wave in the Venus upper atmosphere (Fukuhara et al. 2017). The center of this
feature appears to be located above the Aphrodite Terra highland region and may be a stationary
gravity wave caused by deep atmosphere winds flowing over the elevated terrain. Similar
features were also seen in the 1980s by the Soviet VEGA balloons (Young et al. 1987) and in
analyses of Venus Express data, in which such features are again associated with topographic
highs (Peralta et al. 2017). In addition to topography, latitude and diurnal effects appear to
influence these waves, suggesting a complex interplay between atmospheric dynamics and solar
heating (Kouyama et al. 2017). Such interactions between planetary topography and atmospheric
dynamics may be critical in the correct interpretation of exoplanet atmosphere data, and may be
used to more robustly infer exoplanet surface conditions.

3. Diagnosing the History of Water Loss on Venus

Today Venus has just 0.001% of an Earth-ocean equivalent volume of water in its atmosphere
and an unknown but probably small amount of H 2O stored in its mantle. By contrast, Earth has
an ocean of water at the surface and probably a corresponding water volume or two in its mantle
(Korenaga 2017). It is possible that Venus initially formed with much less water than Earth, but
because water-bearing planetesimals are nearly as likely to hit Venus as Earth (Wetherill 1981),
it is likely that Venus accreted with an amount of water commensurate with its reservoirs of CO 2
and N2, both of which are similar to Earth.
The runaway greenhouse is the accepted explanation for how Venus lost its water
(Ingersoll 1969). Under this scenario, the atmospheric cold-trap for water disappears with
increasing incident solar radiation (insolation). With water vapor abundant in the atmosphere,
rapid hydrogen escape is possible at a rate controlled mostly by the Sun's extreme ultraviolet
(EUV) radiation, which was greater when the Sun was younger. At very early times the
hydrogen from an ocean of water could have been lost in less than 10 million years, whereas
with today's mature Sun it would take a billion years (Abe et al. 2011). Assuming a similar initial
water inventory to Earth, the classic confirmation of massive hydrogen escape from Venus is the
extraordinarily high D/H ratio measured by Pioneer Venus in a trapped droplet of sulfuric acid
(Donahue & Pollack 1983; Donahue & Russell 1997; Donahue 1999), indicating that at least
99% of the initial inventory has been lost since planetary formation. It was proposed by
Grinspoon & Lewis (1988) that the observed Venus D/H ratio is consistent with a steady state of
water loss where water is regularly provided by cometary impacts. However more recent
atmospheric erosion simulations by Kulikov et al. (2006) predict excessive hydrogen escape that
is indicative of significant water loss.
One proposed scenario for when Venus lost its water inventory is that Venus was always
too hot from high insolation for water to condense (Matsui & Abe 1986b; Gillman et al. 2009,
Hamano et al. 2013). Hydrogen escape would then have taken place early and rapidly (Zahnle et
al. 1988), consequently driving off many other atmospheric constituents and imprinting the
remaining gases with telltale mass fractionations (Hunten et al. 1987; Pepin 1991). Alternatively,
the onset of the runaway greenhouse effect may have been delayed by the low luminosity of the
young Sun (Gillman et al. 2009; Abe et al. 2011; Hamano et al. 2013). Other constraints, such as
the limited atmospheric inventory of measured radiogenic 40Ar, which implies an early shut off
of Earth-like degassing, argue strongly that even under this scenario the loss of most of the
planet’s hydrogen took place no later than ~3.5 Gya (Turcotte & Schubert 1988). Thus, to satisfy
measured data for Venus, the second scenario must include a means by which leftover oxygen
was sunk into the mantle, which may conflict with the apparently mildly reduced state of Venus's
atmosphere and surface (Fegley 2003).
Other noble gas abundances provide various indicators of water loss. Currently helium
does not appear to be escaping at a significant rate from Venus (Donahue & Russell 1997). Thus
it may be possible to use the radiogenic 4He inventory, created by Th and U decay, to place
constraints on how long Venus has been in its present state. Pioneer Venus measured 4He at
altitudes above the mixed atmosphere (Donahue & Pollack 1983). When extrapolated to the
lower atmosphere, the upper bound is consistent with little or no 4He escape over the past 3.5
billion years, implying a long-dormant Venus. Krypton is relatively massive and difficult to
ionize, and hence it is very difficult for this gas to escape by any process other than impact
erosion. There is no evidence of fractionating Kr escape from either Earth or Mars, but detection
of strongly mass-fractionated Kr on Venus would provide evidence of an early H 2-dominated
atmosphere (Pepin 1991).
Non-radiogenic xenon on Earth and Mars is very strongly mass fractionated and depleted,
implying that Xe must have escaped these planets. To date, arguably the only tractable model for
Xe escape proposes xenon ion being dragged to space by ions in a hydrogen-rich planetary wind
(Zahnle et al. 2019). Under this scenario, Xe escapes at relatively modest levels of solar EUV
and hydrogen escape fluxes, and on Venus this mechanism can potentially probe times as recent
as 1 Gya. Xenon also has several radiogenic isotopes that are daughters of short-lived radioactive
nuclei. Strange anomalies in these isotopes, such as unexpected abundances, would require
processes taking place very early in Venus's history that alter the relative abundance of Xe in the
Venus atmosphere, and hence are most useful in probing the first scenario under which water
loss takes place very early in Venus's history. If non-radiogenic 36Ar/38Ar in the Venus
atmosphere turns out to be low ( as is the case for Mars), this finding would provide strong
evidence that early hydrogen escape was efficient and that CO 2 was also subject to escape
(Zahnle et al. 1990). If the Venusian 36Ar/38Ar ratio is that of the solar ratio then Ar has not
escaped and neither has hydrogen nor CO2 at high rates. Neon may escape if the hydrodynamic
hydrogen escape rate is sufficiently high (Ozima & Zahnle 1993). If 20Ne/22Ne is found for Venus
to be the same as the solar ratio, then neon did not escape. Lack of neon escape could imply that
water loss from Venus was delayed, as in the second scenario described above. Highly
fractionated neon, i.e., a – 20Ne/22Ne ratio substantially less than that of the ratio for Earth, would
be strong evidence for very early vigorous escape as in the first scenario.
There is some carbon fractionation on Mars (Webster et al. 2013) that is likely
attributable to atmospheric escape, which suggests that carbon fractionation on Venus is possible
if hydrogen escape took place early enough. Oxygen is expected to be mass fractionated on
Venus if oxygen escaped with hydrogen, but the degree of O fractionation depends on how
efficiently oxygen exchanged with crustal and mantle materials. Strong mass fractionation of
oxygen on Venus would imply that the early water loss scenario is correct and that there was
relatively little exchange with the crust and mantle; in contrast, a finding of weak fractionation
would point to an increased likelihood of interaction between the mantle and the atmosphere (or
hydrosphere) in Venus’ past, and that the sink of oxygen from water was the mantle as proposed
by Gillman et al. (2009) and Hamano et al. (2013). Finally, the present-day abundance of sulfur
in the Venus atmosphere is tightly bound up in the planet’s history of water, both chemically and
as a driver of climate through the partnership between these materials in making sulfuric acid
aerosols. The hygroscopic interactions between water and sulfur play a key role in limiting
hydrogen escape from Venus today to very low rates, and are probably a major determinant of
the D/H ratio of the hydrogen that does escape. Thus, a proper understanding of D/H
fractionation in the Venus atmosphere today must take sulfur into account.
As the water loss history of Venus represents one of the most critical aspects of the
planet’s geological evolution , investigations that provide measurements with which to test the
various models of early or later water loss scenarios remain a high priority for future mission
development and design. Ascertaining the longevity of surface water on early Venus will provide
important insights on general climate and habitability evolution in exoplanetary systems.

4. The Geological Enigma

Venus also presents several conundra in relation to its current state and past geologic and
geodynamic evolution that are very relevant to its current atmospheric state. Prior to detailed
spacecraft exploration, the similar size and density of Venus and Earth, and their proximity in the
Solar System, suggested the possibility of a similar geologic evolution, but a divergent
atmospheric evolution. Early Pioneer-Venus topography revealed “continent-like” highlands and
linear lowlands (Pettengill et al. 1980), raising some key questions as to the geodynamic state of
Venus. Were these configurations evidence of active plate tectonics and continental drift on
Venus? Was Venus geologically and geodynamically Earth-like, but shrouded in an atmosphere
dominated by a thermally and compositionally different atmosphere? Ensuing spacecraft radar
imaging missions (the Soviet Venera 15 and 16, and the US NASA Magellan missions) revealed
the global inventory of geological features, structures and units, the stratigraphic relationships
and an interpretative sequence of events (Ivanov & Head, 2011). These investigations showed
evidence for rift zones, folded mountain belts, vast volcanic plains, and many hundreds of
volcanoes and circular to oval plume-like deformation features (coronae) (e.g., see summary in
Head, 2014).
But what about the ages of different parts of the surface? The most surprising finding was
that only ~1000 impact craters are preserved on the surface of Venus, yielding a remarkably
young average age for the planet of ~750 Ma (Schaber et al., 1992; McKinnon et al., 1997). No
heavily cratered (and so presumably older) areas analogous to the cratered terrains on the Moon,
Mercury, and Mars were found. Importantly, the findings that the surface of Venus has an
average age less than 20% of the total age of the planet, are not reflective of an amalgamation of
very old and very young surfaces, such as the continents and ocean basins found on Earth, or the
ancient highlands and the younger maria found on the Moon. The dearth of resolvable variability
in crater areal density, and no sign of a braod range of crater degradation (as seen on the Moon,
Mars and Mercury) suggested a similar age for all geological units. This inference, in turn, led to
a view that the current surface of Venus evidently was produced within the past several hundred
million years. It is also considered that the observed surface was possibly produced
catastrophically, with minimal volcanic or tectonic resurfacing in the meantime. In this regard,
the surface of Venus has evolved quite differently from Earth, the Moon, Mars, and Mercury.
There have been numerous hypotheses that attempt to explain these surprising results, with
limited progress toward generating a consensus (see summaries of these discussions in Bougher
et al., 1997). Some workers called on geologically recent tectonic and volcanic catastrophic
resurfacing. The mechanisms for such resurfacing include vertical crustal accretion and
catastrophic overturn of a depleted mantle layer (Parmentier & Hess, 1992) and episodic
occurrence of plate tectonics (Turcotte, 1993), followed by relative dormancy (Schaber et al.,
1992). Others suggested that the surface evolution may have been triggered by a change in the
mantle convection mechanism that was in turn related to the planetary thermal evolution, or
alternatively caused by a transition from a mobile lid to a stagnant lid regime (Herrick, 1994).
Might any parts of the surface of Venus record an earlier history, possibly even dating
back to a time when Venus could have possessed a much greater volume of water and so even
been habitable? Several authors have argued that some locally elevated, highly deformed regions
of the Venusian surface (called tesserae) may represent crustal materials that pre-date the
surrounding terrain (Basilevsky & Head 1998; Head & Basilevsky 1998; Hansen et al. 1999;
Gregg 2015). Such regions may record a distinct era from the Venusian past (Gilmore et al.
1997; Brown & Grimm, 1997; Gilmore & Head, 2018). Some studies have even suggested that
tessera might have a lower emissivity than the surrounding dark basaltic plains, which could
suggest materials with relatively high silica abundances that might be indicative of ancient
crustal processes, possibly even continent building (Gilmore & Stein 2017). Alternatively, these
emissivity variations could be due to grain size differences (Basilevsky et al. 2004; 2007)
without any specific bearing on composition or formation. If tesserae or other areas of Venus’
surface record an ancient history, targeted investigations of these regions might yield clues to the
early state and evolution of the planet.
The nature of the geological and geodynamic evolution of the first 80% of Venus’ history
is currently unresolved and awaits new missions and investigations to assess a series of key
unresolved questions1. It is clear, however, that the idea that the atmospheric evolution of Venus
proceeded separately from the geological and geodynamic evolution is false (Phillips et al. 2001;
Taylor & Grinspoon 2009; Lammer et al. 2018). Could Venus’ current atmosphere have been
produced by catastrophic degassing during geologically recent global volcanic resurfacing
(Bullock & Grinspoon 1996; Solomon et al. 1999; Bullock & Grinspoon 2001)? Was a
substantial amount of Venus’ water inventory returned to the interior during short-lived global
overturn events (Greenwood 2018) or longer-term plate tectonic-like recycling? Might Venus’
atmospheric evolution be episodic, with multiple overturn and volcanic recycling events in its

1https://www.lpi.usra.edu/vexag/reports/
history (e.g. Strom et al. 1994; Moresi & Solomatov 1998; Armann & Tackley 2012)? Does the
current surface temperature and environment influence the style of tectonics through deeply
penetrating thermal effects (Ghail 2015; Platz et al. 2015)? Perhaps examples of these separate
and divergent evolutionary paths are present in the cornucopia of discovered Venus-like
exoplanets. Exploring this coupled geological-geophysical-atmosphere parameter space, by way
of future missions to Venus, continued exoplanet surveys, and geodynamic and climate
modeling, will help to crystallize an understanding of, and bring new insight to, the formative
years of Venus as well as Earth.
Although Venus accounts for 40% of the mass of terrestrial planets in our solar system,
fundamental properties of its interior composition have been predicted (e.g. Zharkov, 1983), but
not yet measured. As we expand the scope of planetary science to include those planets around
other stars, , core-size and state, seismic velocity and density variations with depth, and thermal
profiles, will provide us with critical benchmarks for testing geochemical and geodynamic
models of terrestrial and exoplanet interiors in general. Furthermore, measurements of the
relative abundances of Venus’ refractory elements can greatly inform models of the degree of
mixing of planetesimals within the critical zone of the protoplanetary disk where terrestrial
planets formed. If the relative refractory element ratios found for the Venus surface are reflected
in the size of the core, we gain a key benchmark for studies of how this and other planetary
systems formed by constraining even this simple parameter for Venus. Such a finding, in turn,
will greatly aid in our studies of exoplanets, where stellar composition may set the initial
compositional gradient of planetesimals within the disk but for which the degree of mixing
remains an elusive, underconstrained parameter.

5. A Plethora of Venus Analogs

The HZ boundaries for main-sequence stars have been previously studied utilizing a variety of
climate models, such as those by Kasting et al. (1993), and more recently by Kopparapu et al.
(2013, 2014). These HZ calculations provide a fundamental application in estimating the fraction
of stars that harbor Earth-size planets in the HZ region, or eta-Earth. Much of the eta-Earth
calculations utilize results from the Kepler mission since these data provide a uniformly derived
sample of many terrestrial-size planets to which meaningful statistical analyses can be applied
(Dressing & Charbonneau 2013, 2015; Kopparapu 2013; Petigura et al. 2013).
The transiting exoplanet detection method is strongly biased towards the discovery of
planets that are relatively close to the host star (Kane & von Braun 2008). Furthermore, shorter
orbital periods result in enhanced signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios of transit signatures because of the
larger number of observed transits within an observatuonal window . Consequencely, data from
the Kepler mission has resulted in detected planets that are preferentially interior to the HZ, the
insolation flux of which means that they are more likely to be potential analogs to Venus rather
than Earth . Since the prospect of a divergence in the evolution of the Earth and Venusian
atmospheres is an important factor in understanding the habitability of Earth, the occurrence rate
of Venus analogs (i.e., eta-Venus) is also an important parameter to quantify.
Figure 2: The extent of the Venus Zone as a function of host star temperature and incident flux,
where solar system planets and Kepler candidates in the terrestrial regime are shown. Credit:
Chester Harman.
Kane et al. (2014) defined the “Venus Zone” (VZ) as a target selection tool to identify
terrestrial planets, as a function of instellation flux, where the atmosphere could potentially be
pushed into a runaway greenhouse producing surface conditions similar to those at Venus. Figure
2 shows the VZ (red) and HZ (blue) for stars of different temperatures. The outer boundary of
the VZ (inner blue line) is the "Runaway Greenhouse" line, calculated using climate models of
Earth's atmosphere (Kane et al. 2014, Kopparapu et al. 2013, 2014). The inner boundary of the
VZ (red dashed line) is estimated to be where stellar radiation from the star would cause
complete atmospheric erosion (Zahnle & Catling 2017). The pictures of Venus shown in this
region represent planet candidates detected by Kepler, where the size of the pictures are scaled
to the size of the detected planets. Kane et al. (2014) calculated occurrence rates of potential
Venus analogs by examining the Kepler exoplanet candidates that were discovered within
different ranges of orbital periods, and comparing those numbers with the expected values based
on the known demographics of exoplanetary systems and accounting for the bias of the transit
method toward shorter orbital periods, described above. These calculations yielded occurrence
rates of VZ terrestrial planets of 32% for low-mass stars (M dwarfs) and 45% for Sun-like stars
(K and G dwarfs). However, note that, as for the HZ, the boundaries of the VZ should be
considered a testable hypothesis since runaway greenhouse could occur beyond the calculated
boundary (Hamano et al. 2013; Foley 2015).
There are now numerous examples of terrestrial planets whose orbits lie interior to the
runaway greenhouse limit of their host stars. The top-down view of the orbital architectures for
two of these systems are shown in Figure 3; the K2-3 (left, Crossfield et al. 2015) and
TRAPPIST-1 (right, Gillon et al. 2017) planetary systems, where the green regions indicate the
extent of the HZ (Kane & Gelino 2012). The light green region is referred to as the
“conservative” HZ, bounded by the runaway greenhouse and maximum greenhouse limts shown
in Figure 2. The dark green regions represent the “optimistic” HZ, and are calculated based on
assumptions regarding the possible past surface liquid water history of Venus and Mars (Kane et
al. 2016). The scale of the figure along one edge is indicated above each system. For both
systems, planet d lies near the inner edge of the optimistic HZ, which is where the VZ overlaps
with the HZ and is calculated under an optimistic assumption that Venus could have maintained
liquid surface water until as recently as 1 Gya (Kopparapu et al. 2013). Both of these planets are
also terrestrial and are prime candidates for further study as potential Venus analogs.

Figure 3: A top-down view of the K2-3 and TRAPPIST-1 planetary systems, showing the orbits
of the planets and the extent of the HZ (green) annd VZ (dark green).
The occurrence rate of Venus analogs will continue to be relevant in the current era of the
Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, as hundreds of terrestrial planets orbiting
bright host stars are expected to be detected (Sullivan et al. 2015; Huang et al. 2018).
Simulations by Huang et al. (2018) predicted that TESS will discover ~100 planets smaller than
1.25 Earth radii during the primary mission, of which ~30 will orbit stars brighter than a TESS
magnitude of 10, making the stars amongst the brightest of those hosting transiting terrestrial
planets. The discoveries of TESS will thus provide key opportunities for transmission
spectroscopy follow-up observations during planetary transit using JWST, amongst other
facilities (Seager & Sasselov 2000; Kempton et al. 2018), and will be used to investigate upper
atmosphere compositions. Such observations that are capable of characterizing the atmospheric
compositions of terrestrial planets will need to face the challenge of distinguishing between
possible Venus and Earth-like surface conditions by combining observations of identifying
relative amounts of atmospheric greenhouse gases with geological models that accounts for those
abundances (Schaefer & Fegley 2011; Ehrenreich et al. 2012; Kane et al. 2018). Apart from
wavelength coverage and signal-to-noise considerations, the challenge of correct interpretation
of transmission spectra arises from such modeling aspects as atmospheric opacity as a function
of scale height and the degeneracy between models that can distinguish between runaway
greenhouse and temperate surface conditions (Robinson 2017). Overcoming these challenges
will be combined with a simultaneous statistical analysis of potential Venus analogs and their
occurrence rates, leading to a quantitative assessment of the primary contributors toward the
emergence of runaway greenhouse atmospheres and thus allowing us to decode why the
atmosphere of Venus may have so radically diverged from its sibling planet, Earth.

6. Understanding the Extrema of Habitability

Many significant questions regarding the current state of Venus remain, pointing to major gaps
in our understanding of the evolution of terrestrial planets, including the future evolution of
Earth. Major outstanding questions include:
 What is the interior structure and bulk composition of Venus? How much does it differ
from that of Earth and of the Sun?
 Did Venus have a habitable period (e.g. Way et al. 2016)? That is, did Venus ever cool
from a syn-accretionary runaway greenhouse (Hamano et al. 2013)? If Venus had a
habitable period, how long did it last? Are there possible habitable locations within the
cloud layers where temperate conditions exist (Limaye et al. 2018)?
 Are there any remnants of ancient crustal materials on the surface formed from silica-rich
minerals (Hashimoto & Sugita 2003)?
 Where did the water go? Was hydrogen loss and abiotic oxygen production prevalent, or
did surface hydration dominate?
 What has been the history of tectonics activity and deformations, volatile cycling, and
volcanic resurfacing (Ivanov & Head 2011) on Venus? Was the delivery of volatiles to
the atmosphere gradual, episodic, or catastrophic? When did Venus enter its present
stagnant-lid regime? Does any subduction occur today (Davaille et al. 2017; Smrekar et
al. 2018)?
 What is the detailed composition, structure, and chemical reactions that exist within the
Venusian middle and deep atmosphere and how does the atmosphere interact with the
surface?
A major focus of current and future exoplanet science is the measurement and modeling of
terrestrial atmospheres. Interpretation of these data are sensitive to the composition, chemistry,
and dynamics of the deeper atmosphere which is largely opaque at most wavelengths. It is
therefore imperative to obtain additional in situ data for terrestrial atmospheres within our solar
system, particularly for a diverse range of atmospheric chemistries. Figure 4 summarizes some of
the outstanding questions that remain to be addressed for Venus, encompassing the various
layers of the Venusian atmosphere as well as the surface and interior, described in more detail by
Taylor et al. (2018). The lack of in situ data to constrain models of the Venus atmosphere, and
the difficulty in building robust models with those data currently available , substantially inhibit
in efforts to effectively model the surface environments of terrestrial planets outside of the solar
system. Moreover, a detailed knowledge of Venus’ atmosphere will provide us with a benchmark
for modeling the coevolution of the planet’s surface and interior and will further aid in our ability
to interpolate and extrapolate similar processes in exoplanet models.

Figure 4: A summary of some outstanding questions regarding the atmosphere and surface of
Venus (Taylor et al. 2018).

7. Conclusions
The only in situ terrestrial planetary data available to us are here in our solar system, and there
are many opportunities to study exoplanet analogs from our terrestrial body inventory. Since
efforts towards the detection and characterization of exoplanets are focussed on Earth-size
planets, Venus is an ideal and accessible exoplanet laboratory. Data from Venus have wide-
reaching consequences for studying exoplanets, and may be applied to modeling planetary
atmospheres, surfaces, interiors, and geological processes that contribute to detectable
atmospheric signatures. The next greatest advances in studies of Venus will come from improved
answers to the top-level questions described in Section 6; in particular, the finding of evidence
for previously temperate conditions on Venus would significantly enhance studies of habitability
and our understanding of the prevalence of life in the universe.
Atmospheric modeling of exoplanets is also of critical importance and improved
measurements of pressure, temperature, composition, and dynamics of the Venusian atmosphere
as a function of latitude and altitude would aid enormously in our ability to interpret and model
exoplanetary atmospheres. In particular, new direct measurements of D/H ratios within and
below the clouds are needed to better constrain the historical volume of water on Venus.
Combined with D/H, isotopic measurements in the atmosphere would yield insights into the
origins and fate of the Venusian atmosphere. Further measurements of the Venusian deep
atmosphere will allow a detailed study of the atmospheric chemistry that occurs at very high
temperature and pressures. Such measurements are important for exoplanet atmospheric studies
because the deep atmosphere of exoplanets will be inferred from models that use data of the
upper atmosphere obtained via transmission spectroscopy (Hu et al. 2012; Forget & Leconte
2014).
Detailed knowledge of the Venusian interior also plays an important role in our ability to
construct robust models of exoplanetary interiors. Current interior models of exoplanets are
based upon limited solar system data and phase transition diagrams combined with mass/radius
measurements and extraction of stellar abundance information (Valencia et al. 2007; Dorn et al.
2015; Hinkel & Unterborn 2018; Wang et al. 2019). Such interior modeling efforts would benefit
enormously from additional data of the interior of Venus since the planet, along with Earth, best
represent the terrestrial planets that are accessible via current exoplanet detection methods.
Specifically, the most valuable interior data will come from measurements that refine Venus’
moment of inertia and allow for the determination of the planet’s geologic evolution, its current
level of activity, and indications of key geodynamic changes (e.g., tectonic and thermal regime)
with time. These fundamental measurements would stimulate progress in addressing the key
questions described in Section 6 on multiple fronts, and vastly improve our understanding of
both modern Venus and its pathway to that modern state.
Ultimately, Venus is an exoplanet laboratory next door that presents an opportunity to
conduct a detailed study of planetary atmospheres and the evolution of habitability that will
never be available to us elsewhere. The considerable number of unanswered, major questions
regarding Venus and their profound bearing on the correct interpretation of atmospheric data and
the connection to the geophysics of the planet, means that we must recognize the consequential
limitations of our ability at present to reliably infer the surface conditions of exoplanets for
which data will always be several orders of magnitude less accessible. Importantly, and despite
its current surface environment, Venus has a vital story to tell regarding the evolution of a
habitable planet, from starting conditions that may have been similar to Earth, through a period
of temperate climates, to an eventual fall into post-runaway greenhouse calamity. It is critical,
now more than ever, that we consider carefully that story.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the referees, Paul Byrne and Richard Ghail, whose detailed
comments greatly improved the quality of the manuscript. This research has made use of the
following archives: the Habitable Zone Gallery at hzgallery.org and the NASA Exoplanet
Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. The
results reported herein benefited from collaborations and/or information exchange within
NASA’s Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) research coordination network
sponsored by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

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